


No Such Creature as the Past

by Sotano



Series: Krakoa is for two very specific mutants [2]
Category: Marvel (Comics), X-Men (Comicverse), X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Dawn of X, House of X/Powers of X, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-07
Updated: 2020-07-07
Packaged: 2021-03-05 05:15:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,927
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25118986
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sotano/pseuds/Sotano
Summary: A chess game, a conversation about how Charles handled an early threat to Krakoan sovereignty, and what it inevitably leads to. In between Chapters 1 and 2 of Just Look at What We Have Made. Can probably be read without any context, 'cause they won't shut the hell up. Charles is still in the weird young body he maybe stole in Astonishing X-Men.
Relationships: Erik Lehnsherr/Charles Xavier
Series: Krakoa is for two very specific mutants [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1819501
Comments: 9
Kudos: 35





	No Such Creature as the Past

Charles' lips drew themselves together. His cheek rested only slightly on his right hand, while a slender finger gently massaged his temple. Erik watched, charmed by the familiar expressions and mannerisms on a young face. Charles moved a piece on the board and huffed in frustration. Lately, the telepath was too preoccupied to play anything remotely like his best.

"Out with it, Charles," Magneto said finally, reclining. His white cape pooled at the foot of the modest green armchair he was sat in, and he almost got caught in it as he raised a leg to rest it across his knee. "You're thinking so loudly I can practically hear it."  
"I'm following up on something, actually. I've set Cerebro to do most of the work," Charles said. "It's your move."  
Erik moved a piece without looking at the board; the metal chess set merely complied. He'd known what he was going to do for the last four minutes. "Following up?" he asked.

Charles hummed, adjusting himself and leaning forward to peer at the board. "Marshall ended up being rather valuable. Orchis seems to be well situated in the US intelligence community. Ironically, I think they're the only ones who know what's happening between the FBI, NSA, SHIELD, and the CIA. The departments themselves don't communicate."  
"Now you've got a foot in the door, so to speak," Magneto said thoughtfully. "How did you handle the photographs?"

Not including, of course, the one Erik had kept for himself. It was a nice little token, and the angle of the shot was a little more innocent than the others.

"Shoddily," Charles said with a shrug. "I fed Marshall a bunch of nonsense visions. You know: that you caved, gave away everything, told them Krakoa was off the coast of Madagascar, that the drug plants were replicable if certain random conditions were met. That sort of thing. Nothing true, nothing useful. Then I let him return to his bosses, traced the thing up. The photos themselves are gone, as are any copies I could find. The FBI was particularly simple, they seem to be under the impression that their Faraday cages keep me out. I wonder how they came to that conclusion, I have a feeling it involved something deeply unethical. I needn't have even bothered with Marshall, at any rate. The CIA have a room I can't see inside, apparently they've got an impromptu department to handle the Krakoa situation, they're calling it the X-desk."

Magneto rolled his eyes.  
Charles made a tentative move, holding onto the piece, changing his mind in mid-grasp and returning it. His bright eyes narrowed at Erik in suspicion, and he moved the bishop instead. "I had Marshall leave some bugs, which felt wonderfully ironic. It's thus far gone unnoticed, Cerebro will soon be picking up on all sorts of interesting tidbits. I was just now checking to make sure Sage is prepared for the information." Erik was struck again by how much simpler things were, working with Charles. Something that might have taken him weeks of planning was a two day background task for the great Charles Xavier, and Erik would be lying if he said he wasn't enjoying the blatant displays of his friend's power.

"As for, well, *us*, the agencies are in chaos," Charles added, resting his cheek on his knuckles again.  
"We've been alive too long for any bureaucracy to keep track of."  
"Essentially, yes," Charles said. "And dead too many times. For the last few years there's been a memorandum out in all departments not to shred anything mutant-related after a death, but it's a little late for us. It was simple bad luck that some pencil pusher at the FBI found a few boxes from the early Hoover days on suspected Communist expats. I suppose since I went under the radar for a little while after my time in Israel with you, the connection was never made. This, of course, before everything went digital."

"Humans and their short memories," Erik mused. Charles's corrective move had dashed his original plan, but no matter. He still had a healthy advantage, and moved a pawn to free up some space. "Did you find anything good? One always hears rumors about what wild nonsense the FBI has buried in the archives."  
"Erik, are you asking if I used my gift of telepathy and my singular access to the highest levels of US intelligence to find idle gossip about famous dead people?"  
Magneto fixed him with his best eyebrow arch; nothing compared to Charles' but not exactly ineffective. Charles looked down at the board, and took up his neglected teacup with perhaps an exaggerated innocence.  
"So who did you start with?" Erik asked as a smile broke onto his arched features.  
"Gore Vidal," Charles said, finishing a sip. "File nearly as thick as mine, I was almost jealous."

Erik laughed fully, a feeling he was still not entirely accustomed to. This was flirtation, he knew, on both their parts. Their side-stepping: not so much beating around the bush as dancing around it. Discussion that mercifully skirted argumentation, though that had its place. The excuse of a chess game to watch, and listen, and think. Each picked the other's brain with a practiced ease. Each thought idly about the other, until those thoughts grew less idle, and more restless, and one of them gave up on the game.

"And me?" Erik asked, feigning disinterest.  
"We do make quite a pair," Charles mused. He made a quite clever move on the chessboard, actually, which Erik frowned at.  
"The vanity in this room alone," he continued, "I'm surprised we don't create some sort of black hole of pretension. If you must know, darling, they've got rooms and rooms full of Magneto notes; mostly unsubstantiated, some flat-out incorrect and all of it quite useless."

The plan of Krakoa had dominated both of their waking hours for months, now, and now that it was here, they had precious little time to spare. But Charles was quite adept at multitasking and Erik was fairly used to working on little sleep, and this was worth more to both of them than they were prepared to articulate. Though, Erik supposed, his declaration the other night had been as close to it as he knew how to say. He'd asked, in his limited way, for Charles to marry him. Not that it had any real significance for either of them; not that the trappings or the ceremony or even the language of 'married couple' meant anything beyond a light, affectionate truth.

But Magneto liked the idea of promising not to leave Charles' side, even if it didn't need to be said. He wanted to say it. He took Charles' hand, which had been hovering over the board.  
"It's my move," he said, and didn't relinquish his grip.  
He pulled Charles slowly towards him, off the chair and into his lap, so that he lay across the armchair.  
"An unorthodox chess strategy, to be sure," Charles said, knowing that it wasn't. Not for them.  
"I don't like this new body of yours, Charles," Erik said. "I want that noted for the record."  
Charles hummed, with a hint of disbelief, and stretched, and Erik's traitorous eyes greedily followed the planes of his stomach, the arch of his back.

Magneto kissed him and Charles saw it coming from miles away, damn him. A black suited hand slid over Erik's white costume to snake around his neck and pull Erik in. Erik did his best to manhandle, and Charles met him at every turn, until they were quite tangled on the armchair, and Erik had wound up bent over Charles' reclining form, cape trapped beneath his knees. A smile played on Charles' face, even if his eyes were a bit lidded. Even if Magneto knew, and could prove, that Charles was just as needy as him, if not more thanks to the happy quirks of new biology. He put a hand down over Charles' hip, and swiped only his thumb over the front of Charles' costume and the telepath bucked up involuntarily. Erik swooped in, kissed him triumphantly. Charles pulled a hand through the back of Erik's hair, tugging him just barely away, and bit at Erik's lip.

"Stop it," Erik warned, swatting Charles' other hand away from his hair.  
"What?" Charles played innocent again, but that little upturned corner at the right side of his mouth betrayed him.  
"You know very well what," Erik said, leaning over, biting at the spot where Charles' neck met his ear. Xavier went taut for a second, and played it off. "Distracting me."  
"Oh, I'm sorry, did you want to finish the game?" Charles said, jerking a thumb at the table.  
"Do you remember when Wolverine said that sometimes when you talk he gets a little urge to beat you to death?"

Charles hummed, his hand wandered passively over Erik's chest. "Yes, do bring up Logan and gratuitous violence, darling, it's an excellent way to convince me to go to bed with you."  
Erik pinned him down as well as he could under the circumstances. "Who said anything about a bed?"  
Charles rolled his eyes, and his clever hands found the fasten for his cape. Erik had started adding one to his costumes ever since they'd gotten stuck once without their powers. "You're not fucking me over an armchair," he said casually, as the cape fell. Next he began to look for the front fastens.  
"I'm not fucking you at all if you keep playing these games," Erik said, pinning Charles' hands together above his head.  
"An empty threat if I've ever heard one. I can read minds, you know."

"Well," Erik said, hooking a hand underneath Charles' thigh. "You hardly ever mention it. Why don't we play these chess matches in bed, if this is how they're always going to end up?"  
Charles made a face. "I'll thank you not to make me associate chess with sex any more than I already do, Erik. I'd like to retain the ability to play chess with other people, if at all possible."  
Magneto was about to scold him again for distractions when Charles' leg came around his thigh. He tumbled back and Charles landed gracefully straddling him, looking down. Charles pressed close, placating him with kisses, and Erik's hands traveled up Charles' legs. When Charles' hips bucked again, Erik groaned as if he were wounded, and caved.

He pushed Charles off of him, a feat in itself, and dragged them both towards the bedroom. Finally, with a light shove, Charles fell backwards onto the bed. Erik's powers reached out and undid the fastens on Charles' top, so that his chest was open, and Erik bit at his collarbone. Mentally, he reminded himself to thank Emma's designer for the costumes, in some discreet way. Magneto had managed to entirely strip Charles before the poor telepath could do anything.

Erik swayed back, shifting his weight gracefully, and pulled away at his suit with his powers. He paused, still half-clothed, to survey his handiwork. Charles was below him, exhaling faintly, obviously struggling to retain himself. Erik watched him, rapt, and touched him occasionally; turning his head this way and that. He made careful touches designed to make the telepath bare his neck, arch his back.  
"I was right," Erik said. "This body is easier to read."  
It probably would have sounded more triumphant, more joking, if Erik could manage a smile. This whole, er, two body problem felt a little precarious, he thought. He knew his expression was reverent. He knew he was touching Charles as if he were made of glass. But the man who looked up at him looked terrifyingly like the man who he still hadn't hurt yet, and that kind of responsibility was weighing on him like a ton of bricks.

"Erik," Charles called out softly, pulling him away from his own sense of guilt. That hadn't been what Charles had called him, then. It was Magnus, all those years ago, at least for a little while. He felt a light pulling at the edge of his consciousness which he recognized as well, older and so much more powerful than the young man who had engaged him tirelessly in Israel, knocked at his door at all hours of the night and spoken in hypotheticals about beings with strange gifts.

Erik kissed him savagely, as if to prove that he could, as if to make some sort of point, and Charles just wrapped warm arms around his broad shoulders. The skin contact was still surprisingly intimate and an urgency bled back into him which he had felt when he pulled away Charles' clothes. He still wasn't entirely sure that this was healthy, that sex for him wasn't some sort of repository for pain, or perhaps a blind affirmation of life, but his thoughts were being pulled into an intensity, a single-mindedness that he drew comfort from. Charles, his Charles, the only person in the world, the only thing Magneto coveted. The entire yawning maw of his wants, and nothing would ever sate him.

Charles writhed beneath him as his telepathy responded to Magneto's singular focus.  
"Jesus Christ," Charles managed through almost gritted teeth, writhing upwards.  
"No Gods here but you, Charles," Erik said.  
He bit down onto Charles' shoulder, just because he could, and planted a hand at the small of Charles' back. In another era, Charles might have objected. Might have thrown away their entire evening to a fight. Presently, he just kissed Erik. He knew what kind of man Erik was, and why he felt the need to speak like this. He didn't fight it, he didn't even *want* to fight it, and Erik could tell because Charles' entire mind was bared. He just accepted, and perhaps later he'd make a teasing remark about supplication and sacrilege, but for now he made an earnest noise that Erik chased, returning Charles' earlier bite to the lip.

Charles' knees were around his sides now. Or, he was fairly certain they were. Little shocks of skin-on-skin contact tore through his nerves, but he was half in Charles' mind at this point, and it made things very difficult. They were both achingly hard, and when had Erik pulled the rest of his clothes away? It took a few moments' desperation, a frantic reaching for the nightstand, a barely-won fight for control and he stilled inside Charles. The telepath arched for him again, liminally desperate for every bit of physical contact, perhaps a holdover from when these nights were temporary arrangements. Now, they were all one affair and Charles was well and truly his. All that magnificent power, now begging Magneto to move. Some dark recess of his hindbrain wanted to keep Charles here, like this, forever.

He rolled his hips experimentally and Charles cried out, dipping his head back in a very appealing way. Magneto had a particularly vindictive thought about Charles, tomorrow, shaking hands with a random assortment of the day's human politicians; covered in bite marks. Charles' lips twitched for a moment, until both of them decided it really wasn't very funny at all. Whatever stubbornness Erik had been drawing from was entirely exhausted; he gave Charles exactly what he wanted.

It only took a short while after that for Charles' stolen youth and overstimulated brain to capitulate. Erik watched, rapt, as Charles came over his stomach, and he followed suit helplessly, still tangled in Charles' mind. A sensation like vaulting over a cliff's edge. He collapsed onto Charles, as the weariness of the past few days began to soak into his bones. Charles kissed his shoulder listlessly, in the dark.

Erik had several very nice, very unfocused thoughts about this, as he moved so that Charles might be able to breathe. He felt Charles' mind re-establish itself, rearrange, and withdraw just enough so that things weren't too confusing. Magneto made a half-cocked job of cleaning the both of them and fell back content to leave the rest for the morning. Charles opened his mouth to say something and Erik cut him off.  
"If you say anything about finishing a game of chess, I swear I'll leave."  
"Don't be silly," Charles said cheerily. "Where would you sleep?"  
"I do have a bed in the House of M, Charles."  
The telepath turned his head to look at him, eyebrow up. "Is that somewhere behind the giant metal balustrades? Or was it under the power generator that sounds like a jet engine?"  
"Good to be reminded that not even fucking you will get you to shut up," Erik mumbled passively.  
"Sleep might do the trick, if you're lucky."

He turned to look at Charles; taking in the tired smile, the oh-so-rarely relaxed eyebrows, the sharp cheekbones. Charles looked eerily young, so pale in the moonlight, and Erik had the irrational thought that none of this was real, that he'd wake up tomorrow to find that this had all been a dream fed to him by the parasitic Krakoa, to sap away at his life, or worse, that--  
\--Charles interrupted his train of thought by curling around him, resting his head atop Magneto's shoulder, and it was almost weightless despite containing something so crucial to the survival of infinite lives. Erik pulled an arm around him and listened to steady breathing and felt very real. The spike of alertness that had followed his bad thoughts receded, and he drifted into sleep. In the morning, they both had much work to put towards their dream.


End file.
